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Tilly Blyth, Lead Curator for Information Age, reflects on how the World Wide Web came into existence.

It was 25 years ago today that the World Wide Web was born. Only a quarter of a century ago, but in that short time it has transformed our world. In a recent Great British Innovation Vote, musician Brian Eno said that ‘no technology has been so pervasive so quickly as the internet’.

On 12 March 1989, the British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote his influential paper “Information Management: A Proposal” and circulated it to colleagues at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Scientists from all over the world were brought together at CERN to conduct research, but Berners-Lee identified that there was a problem with the way information was managed and shared between them. His proposal suggested a way of linking documents through a system of hypertext.

Rather wonderfully, Berners-Lee’s boss, Mike Sendall commented that the proposal was ‘Vague but exciting…’ but he agreed to purchase a NeXT computer. The machine was to become the world’s first web server and Berners-Lee used it to build the first ever website. Today, the only evidence on the machine of its important history is a torn sticker that says: “This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!!”

To celebrate the birthday of the Web, from today we are putting Tim Berners-Lee’s NeXT cube computer on display in our Making the Modern World gallery. In Autumn 2014 it will move into our new Information Age gallery, to play a leading role in the stories of the last 200 years of information and communication technologies.

Baroness Martha Lane-Fox visiting the Science Museum to unveil the NeXT cube – the original machine on which Sir Tim Berners-Lee designed the World Wide Web. Credit Science Museum.

Yesterday, we celebrated the arrival of the NeXT computer at the Museum and the impending anniversary, with a reception attended by Martha Lane Fox and Rick Haythornthwaite, Chair of the Web Foundation.

But a birthday for the Web is not just a chance to reflect on the past, but to look towards the future. What kind of Web do we want? Currently only 3 in 5 people across the world have access to the Web. Do we want a tool that is open and accessible to anyone? And do we want to control our public and private data? How can we ensure that the Web isn’t only a device for a few companies, but gives us all rights to achieve our potential? Through the #web25 hashtag Tim Berners-Lee is inviting us all to share our thoughts.

Each day as part of the Great British Innovation Vote – a quest to find the greatest British innovation of the past 100 years – we’ll be picking one innovation per decade to highlight. Today, from the 1990s, it’s the turn of the World Wide Web.

“No technology has been so pervasive so quickly as the internet. Twenty-five years ago it was a mystery to most people and now several billion of us use it everyday, several times a day.” Brian Eno on why you should vote for the the World Wide Web.

“What made the internet really viable, the blood in it veins if you like, was the brilliant invention of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the World Wide Web. What made that so universal was the decision to make it free. So, to brilliance, add generosity.”

Born out of a need for scientists at CERN to share data more efficiently, computer scientists Tim Berners-Lee and Belgian Robert Cailliau created a system of linked ‘hypertext’ documents accessible through a global computer network.

Described at the time as ‘vague but exciting’ by his boss, Berners-Lee went on to host the first web page in December 1990, and today over 2.4 billion people – more than a third of the population of Earth – have access to over a trillion web pages which make up the World Wide Web.

Click here to vote for the World Wide Web as the greatest British innovation of the past 100 years.